


Flicker, Flash, Fade

by Gildedmuse



Category: Rent (2005), Rent - Larson
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Canonical Character Death, Drug Use, F/M, HIV/AIDS, Light Angst, M/M, Originally Posted on LiveJournal, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-03-01 02:26:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18791122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gildedmuse/pseuds/Gildedmuse
Summary: Mark and Roger are both dealing with their problems in equally fucked up ways.Worse than Roger dying is Mark watching him clinging on and unable to accept that this is it. He's spent every day by his bed, waiting on Roger to break through and come back to him, unaware of how blissfully at peace Roger is struggling to stay while trapped in his own little world.





	1. Act One

**Author's Note:**

> [Originally posted in 2007]

**Scene One**

 

The first camera Mark gets is black, smooth, and heavy in his hands. It’s not like anything he’s ever held before. Newer than any of the ones they have at the school that he sometimes gets to borrow, more professional than his dad’s cheap, plastic recorder he steals on occasions for the quick films his friends help him make in the park. He spends a whole day pouring over the manual, learning each switch and curve until the small black body is imprinted into the memory of his fingertips. Mark is amazed that anything can be this beautiful, complicated, his.

 

The first thing he gets in frame that is forever on film is his uncle’s smile. “You like it?” As if the way Mark looks through the lens with this expression of reverence for the small, shining machine in his hands isn’t enough of a clue.

 

So that he doesn’t sound like a freak that is in love with a camera he says, “It’s better than dad’s camcorder.” It’s almost convincing, that he isn’t crazy for this thing that is nothing more than a recording devise, except for the excitement bubbling in his chest shows through in his face-splitting grin.

 

This is all back at Mark’s sixteenth birthday. There were other gifts, but they would all be forgotten in the rush. Later, right before he drops out of Brown University before they can kick him out for trespassing in attempt to make a documentary about corruption in the local school system, he’ll sell this camera and use his tuition money to buy a new one (Bolex 16mm and it fits in his hands like a dream) and move to the city. That first day, though, trying to keep his uncle in frame as he flips through the manual, Mark swears he would never sell his Arriflex for anything. He will be in love with it forever. Probably longer.

 

This is at the same time that he thinks his girlfriend, Sasha, is his soul mate. Kind of like his Arriflex, he’d end up without her eventually as well, only she would be the one that leaves. He spent too much time with his camera, she would say. Same reason Maureen would give him years later, but Sasha told him with less cursing and no dramatic arm flailing.

 

“Aren’t you going to say thank you?” his mom asks, breaking into Mark’s worship of the machine. His mom never really did understand his obsession with art, with cameras, with stealing his dad’s camcorder and running off to the park for hours. She doesn’t get why her “baby” watches these films no one has ever heard of or why he hangs out with kids that have too many piercing or weird hair in unnatural colors and who look like they are always getting into such trouble. He knows she thinks it all stems back to his love of cameras, and that the look she is giving David right now is a mix of thanks and worry because it can only get worse now that Mark has a camera of his own.

 

When he was sixteen he always figured it was because his mom wanted him to be his dad, and was somehow ashamed about his interests. Of course, he figured out that he was wrong later, but at sixteen he feels persecuted. Turns out she would love him regardless of what he spends his time doing, if it is with a camera or if he were, God forbid, a drug addict with illegitimate children and in jail for murder. Still, he gave her a lot to worry. Like all mothers worry, but not all mothers have a son who constantly talks about moving to New York the moment he turns eighteen, who hangs out with guys who have no homes and girls who Mrs. Cohen just knows are lesbians who are just going to hurt her poor boy. So of course she worries maybe a little more than most parents. She wants Mark to be healthy and safe. As much as she loves David, she doesn’t want Mark to end up like his uncle. That isn’t what she wants for her son.

 

“Sorry,” Mark says to his mom before turning back to his camera, looking at his uncle through the lens. “Thanks.” David beams at the camera, despite the fact that Mark hardly sounds excited at all, but his family knows him. They can all pretty much see the emotions he doesn’t show.

 

While Mark is still fiddling around, David makes a show at waving to the camera. “What are you going to film first?”

 

“Let me see that, Mark,” Mr. Cohen says, snatching the camera from his son’s hands. Mark frowns, watching his dad closely to make sure no harm comes to the brand new machine. “How much did this cost, Dave? It looks too expensive for a kid.” He never approves of anything David ever does. He never approves of David.

 

“Oh, come off it Jacob. Mark’s sixteen, not a kid. Besides, if he wants it as much as I think he does, he’ll take care of it. Lay off him for once.” But then, David never really approved of how his younger brother raised his children, of how he controls them or treats Mark and Cindy like he’s a mold of himself. The brothers got into a fight every time they were around each other, up until David moved to California. No one ever explained to Mark why.

 

They fight at that sixteenth birthday about art and Mark and kids. Mark never heard a word. He flipped on his camera, and everything else faded to black.

 

*

 

Sometimes Mark feels like his entire life is just going to flicker, flicker, and fade away into nothing. Just like the end of a reel, the film is flashing against the projector, flipping away into nothing but bright white. Mark can look around at his friends, at the story he’s creating, and he sees his life in that final flash of white.

 

After he has shot all the scenes of New York, and after the documentary has nothing left to say, there will be this flicker of the last of the reel wrapping around and then nothingness where Mark’s life should be. After the credits have rolled, what is left? Mark’s entire life for the last year and a half has been making this film and outside of slowly capturing his friends’ deaths, Mark has no idea what his art, what he, means anymore.

 

Once, a long time ago, it meant being an artist. He left home for that one, left Brown even though he’d been a promising young student. He’d withstood his father’s shame and mother’s worry and came to New York with his backpack and his camera. Back then, all he had to do was turn on his camera and he knew all the answers. Experiences would prove all of it wrong, of course, but at the time Mark just needed to be an artist. That made it easy to forget that he was starving, to forget that he had a girlfriend (and in turn she occasionally forget she had a boyfriend, as well) or that his best friend was slowly turning into a junkie. Those were days with scripts that Mark could easily follow so the rest of the world meant nothing to him.

 

Then something happened. Mark would never know, because he never caught in on film, but something snapped. He came home from filming and Roger’s door was locked, would be for three days until for the funeral he would come out just long enough to break down again. Mark came home, self-imposed oblivion destroyed when he saw Collins on his hands and knees, scrubbing at the blood that Mark can still see between the tiles.

 

After that, Mark’s world became people. He felt like he was trying to keep everyone together, but in reality he’d been so detached for so long that he never knew they had already all fallen apart. He looks to Benny for support without realizing that Benny is all ready engaged and leaving all of this behind. He clings to Maureen, afraid to face the loneliness Roger is suffering from, but by the time he puts away the scripts for his life, Maureen has already moved on. He wants to take care of his best friend, but Roger is already sick and nothing Mark can do now can make that better. Life isn’t like film, he learns in one hard blow. You can’t rewind, edit the part you don’t like, change the script so you can have that happy ending.

 

Benny finds money and Maureen finds girls and, eventually after clawing at the bed and screaming out and letting Mark see him vomiting and crying and delusional from the withdrawals, even Roger moves to someone else. To a beautiful girl who sings of carpe diem and has April’s smile and who doesn’t need to hide behind a camera. Mark, alone, goes back to filming. This time, it’s a picture book eulogy. This time he knows the ending is coming, even if he doesn’t know when, and he knows happiness is impossible to find by the credit roll.

 

Just like last time, Mark feels himself disappear into the gears of the camera. The small tick of the winding is a count down, the rolling film is all that is left of Mark’s life, and when the reel snaps to an end, there will be nothing left but a flash of white from the projector. He doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want these thoughts at all. He wants to be the guy that will jump up on tables, scream at Maureen’s protest, and get high on the roof with Collins. He wants to be fun and happy, always smiling and goofing around. He sees Mimi and Collins and even Roger able to smile and laugh. So why can he only do it when his friends are around?

 

These are the thoughts that flicker through Mark’s head as he sits there in the colorful office of the hospital’s grief counselor’s room. These are the thoughts he’s supposed to be sharing with the man in front of him but instead he doesn’t stay a word. His eyes flicker from the posters of cats hanging off of branches and clocks with smiley faces inside and the man behind the table taps his fingers against the fake wood, the drums of his finger tips perfectly filling up the space that Mark should use to spill all of this out.

 

He stays quiet. The man stays quiet. The wall clock and the fingers keep going, but Mark isn’t saying a word.

 

Finally a sigh mingles in with all the tapping, and the man straightens himself up, looking across the table at Mark with this determination to get Mark to open up. Mark wants to wish him luck, but says nothing. “We’re here for you,” he says, motioning to Mark as if the whole hospital is really here just for him. “I understand that this is a difficult time for you, but we want to be able to help.”

 

He could help by sorting out all the film that Mark has ever shot, and lining it edge to edge until Mark can take a good luck at his life and figure out what it is supposed to mean. Somehow, he imagines this guy – this, Dr. Klein according to the bronze plaque on his desk – would want to get his hands dirt with that. They want to help Mark, but only until they can get him out of here, and who really cares about his life’s meaning, anyway?

 

“I want you to reflect on your life,” Dr. Klein is saying despite Mark’s obvious show of not listening to him. He doesn’t want to be in this colorful office with suicidal cats and detached yellow faces. He doesn’t want to be in this hospital at all, ideally, but give him clean white walls over this room any day. “Think about all the time you have had with your friend. Try and remember him how he was, that is what he would have wanted, I’m sure.”

 

Would Roger have wanted Mark to remember when Mark throw him into the shower and turned the cold water on full blast in hopes that he hadn’t ODed, trying to keep him conscious. Or maybe before that, when he was clawing away the skin at his arms during the withdrawal to try and hold on. Maybe Roger would want to be remembered that way. Dr. Klein doesn’t really say.

 

As crazy as Mark thinks this guy is, this guy that never meant Roger when he wasn’t passed out in some hospital bed trying to tell Mark want to remember about his best friend, he can’t help but let some of that advice sink in. Maybe it is time to look back on his life. Maybe it is time to reflect. Maybe someone can tell Mark what the fuck happened to his life that he’s sitting across from a man that thinks death can be made okay with a poster that says Hanging In There.

 

*

 

Before the camera, that is when Mark’s life gets fucked up. Well, okay, there is no one spot but there is a point, where everything in his life starts getting messy.

 

“You’re a fag.” Eight year olds shouldn’t know that word, but Mark does. He’s heard his dad call his uncle that a few times, and it’s stuck for him. He asked his mom, and she said to never say it, but dad does it enough that Mark never really shook it off. She said it’s two men love each other in a mommy and daddy sort of way.

 

Mark doesn’t really get that, but from how his dad yells it, he’s guessing it has to be bad. Eight year olds can pick up more than their parents seem to think, and so even though Mark doesn’t understand homosexuality and hardly understands sex at all, he knows there is something inherently wrong with two guys who love each other. His dad said so.

 

Michael wrinkles up his nose, growling down at this eight-year-old standing next to him. He’s a whole seven years older than Mark, Cindy’s math tutor who comes over Thursday so that she can flirt with him while he tries to teacher her algebra. This Thursday, Cindy is in the bathroom trying to put on her mom’s make up to show Michael how pretty she is, and so Mark is left alone in the kitchen with the high school student, and the first thing he says to him is, “You’re a fag.”

 

He isn’t even sure why he says it. Maybe just because he overheard dad using it again. Maybe he just wants this high schooler’s attention because when you’re eight, high school is as cool as it gets. Anyway, he doesn’t have a reason to say it to Michael, but he does, and when he does the older boy turns to look at him very slowly, like he’s about to lash out. And of course, Mark being eight, he jumps away quickly. “What?”

 

“Uh…” Suddenly, Mark doesn’t want Michael’s attention so bad. Or, really, he doesn’t want to get beaten up by a guy who seems a million times bigger than him. “Nothing?”

 

Michael just keeps staring at him and Mark starts to fidget around, pulling at his Spiderman shirt and slowly trying to back up towards the living room where his mom is vacuuming. She’ll protect him if Michael tries to beat him up. “Where’d you hear something like that?”

 

“What?” Little eight-year-old Mark stops walking towards his mom and looks back at this guy, and Michael doesn’t look like the type to beat him up really, and he isn’t glaring anymore. Carefully, Mark walks back towards him. “Nowhere.”

 

“You don’t say that,” Michael tells him, giving Mark a harsh but not scary look, like when Mom is trying to get him to eat green beans. “Do you even know what that means?”

 

“With two guys!” Mark says quickly before he can get the thought to form. He wants to impress Michael with what he knows though, so he just blurts it out. Michael seems to get what he means, though, and nods.

 

“Yeah, something like that,” Michael says, waving a pen at him. Mark watches it bob around in Michael’s hand as he jerks it around to make his point. “And there’s nothing wrong with it, you got that?” And of course Mark nods quickly, eager to show that he’s just as cool as a high school kid. “When someone says something like that, you tell them to shut the fuck up, okay?”

 

Mark’s eyes go wide. It’s the third time he’s ever heard the word fuck. Once had been on the TV, and mom had switched the station quickly, and once had been from Uncle David, and his mom had nearly had a fit about it. It sounds so cool and grown up, that all Mark can do is nod.

 

Probably, Michael didn’t even really think about what he was telling this impressionable little eight year old. He is just a kid, too, after all, even if Mark sees him as some kind of cool adult figure. The fact is that, looking back, Michael is this scrawny little guy with huge glasses and bad acne that stutters when he spoke, and when he told Mark what to say if someone uses the word fag, he was just lashing out at all the kids that had called him that all through out high school. He wasn’t thinking that Mark might actually be listening to him.

 

Two nights later, Mark is sitting next to the grill while his dad makes burgers for the family, and one thing of vegetable stir fry for the guy that David lives with. “I don’t see why he can’t just eat a burger,” his dad grumbles as he flips them over. Mark’s mom starts running a hand through her hair, which Mark knows is a sign that David and his dad are about to get into another fight.

 

“Jacob... Not now. This is supposed to be about family.” His mom warns, patting Mark before she stands up and walks over to talk with his grandparents. Even a small child has to wonder why his grandparents always refuse to sit or talk to the guy that comes along with David. Mark likes him. His name is Kevin, and he’s always smiling and talking with Mark. Even if he doesn’t like burgers, Mark thinks he’s cool.

 

“I’m just saying,” his dad says below his breath, but loud enough that David and Kevin both stop talking with Cindy and look back at him. “Don’t see why we have to make some fag meal special for him.”

 

Kevin would have let it slide. He just rolls his eyes and turns away, and for David he would let it slide. David, he might have. Maybe if his brother kept pushing he’d say something, but since his parents are there, he bites his lip. No one expects there to be a fight today. But then no one realizes that this is the point where Mark’s life gets fucked up, where he stops listening to everything his dad says, and where he speaks up with, “Shut the fuck up.”

 

Everything expect for the sound of cow’s fat popping against the grill stops and everyone turns to stare at this angelic faced eight year old boy with a dangerously defiant look in his eyes. “What was that?”

 

“You’re wrong,” Mark says, pointing at his dad. “You’re wrong, so shut the fuck up.”

 

Cue Hell breaking out in the Cohen’s backyard.

 

“Mark!” His mom screeches and that pretty much covers up everything us from his sister’s gasp to his grandparent’s muttering. It doesn’t stop his dad from grabbing his upper arm and hauling him out of his chair.

 

“In your room!” He barks as he pulls Mark into the house and Mark struggles and whines but he can’t pull out. “You’re in so much trouble, Mark. How dare you speak like that!” Mark is screaming the whole way as his dad drags him up the stairs, throws him in his room and slams the door.

 

The second he’s out of his dad’s grip Mark runs off to his window, looking down at the yard just as his dad gets back outside. He can’t hear anything, but he can watch his parents huddle together, and he’s smart enough to tell that they’re in a fight. Grandma and grandpa don’t look that happy either. Actually, the only person who doesn’t seem to hate Mark right then is his uncle David, leaning against the deck and smiling up at the window.

 

Mark’s nose presses to the glass as he watches his grandfather getting up and heading in, and his mom trying to stop him, and the smoke rising from the hamburgers, and it looks like he’s managed to cause complete chaos in his small little family just by telling his dad that he was wrong.

 

And it feels good.

 

*

 

“You know…” Mark doesn’t look away from Roger as the hand lands against his shoulder. There are too many machines to watch, the rise and fall of his chest,, the loud beeps from the screen next to him that make up for the utter silence, the stillness that he’s never actually seen in Roger before. He should be kicking in his sleep, at least, but there is nothing. “I’ve heard that coma patients, they can sometimes hear people talking to them.”

 

“They said he couldn’t hear anything,” Mark mutters, his voice quieter than that buzz in the room coming off all the equipment they have hooked up to Roger. A nurse tried to explain how it’s breathing for him, how it’s keeping him alive and Mark just wanted to scream at her. What makes her think he wants to hear about how the only thing keeping his best friend alive is a stupid machine? Mark had hours of Mimi and Angel on film, and he can swear to her, it didn’t help keep them alive.

 

“Well…” Joanne slides into the seat next to him, and Mark is sure that she is giving him a hopeful smile but he doesn’t want to see it. He’s kind of tired of people being hopeful right now. “Maybe you could try it anyway, you know? He might be bored…”

 

Mark can imagine that if Roger were conscious and bored, and Mark tried to talk about him about the things going on in his head right now, Roger would probably laugh at him. Or maybe cuff him in the shoulder and tell him to grow up and stop complaining. He wouldn’t want to listen, though. He’d want to play music, or talk about Mimi, or just sit there in silence and think for a while. Mark can’t do any of that for him, and neither can these machines. So Roger will just have to be bored. “I don’t think it works like that.”

 

“Maureen is worried…”

 

“Good for her.” Joanne’s expression goes from pleasant to harsh pretty quickly, and Mark does see this because she decides to stick her face inches from his when she gives him that look so that Mark really doesn’t have any sort of choice.

 

“Let me rephrase,” she says, backing up but making sure that Mark is still watching her, and he does because he doesn’t have the energy left for a fight. He barely has the energy to drag himself home every night and curl up on the couch and not sleep before visiting hours are open and he can come back here. “We’re all worried. About you.”

 

“I’m not the one in a coma…” Mark mutters, looking back to Roger. It’s hard to stomach, seeing his best friend this way. Hardly even his best friend at all, and why can’t people just fuck off for a while. They all want Mark to deal and break down and be okay and show how upset he is, and he can’t do all of that. He can’t do any of that. He just wants Roger to wake up.

 

Joanne managed to stay longer than Maureen or Benny had managed so far, but eventually Mark’s silence gets to her and she sighs, patting his shoulder before walking out of the room. Leaving Mark alone with an almost dead body that only looks like it might have been his best friend at some point. But Roger had never been so sickly and bruised looking, so still and calm, and maybe it’s just easier to believe that Roger is already gone and that thing is just something he left behind on his way out.

 

Mark wishes he could think like that. It seems like it would be easier, if he’d just accept it already, and maybe then he wouldn’t be so fucked up anymore, waiting for his best friend to wake up.

 

Shaking, Mark stands up and leans over the bed, hand resting on Roger’s stomach that barely moves at all. “Roger?” There isn’t silence, there is the beeping machines and the gentle sigh of fake breaths and the people walking by in the halls, but there isn’t an answer, either. Not even a flutter of lashes. Nothing. “Roger? Roger, can you hear me?”

 

* * *

 

 

**Scene Two**

 

Roger?

 

“It’s going to be okay…” Roger leans against the hand in his hair, nails gently scraping against his skin as it strokes him. Soft touches with just a pinch of roughness to them, just like he’s always liked. It’s comforting without making him feel like he’s in danger of the touch getting softer and softer and disappearing all together.

 

Red nails. He can’t see them, but he knows they’re red. Deep red, chipped at the edges and stroking through bleached out hair. Red nails. He’s seen them enough to know exactly how they look without having to see them at all.

 

“It’s going to be okay,” she whispers. Pink lips, soft but chapped and moving against his ear as she speaks. “You’re okay now, Roger. I’ve got you.” Roger moves and the bed seems to move with him as he curls up against her chest. Safe. That’s a way he hasn’t felt in a long time.

 

Roger…

 

No.

 

Can you hear me?

 

No.

 

No. No. No.

 

Roger closes his eyes tight, body tensing in her arms. No, he can’t hear him. No. Save me, please. He doesn’t want to. He’s safe here, and he hates that they keep trying to call him back to where he’s sick and alone and in some hospital bed unable to move. “Don’t let them…”

 

“Shh…” She kisses his forehead, stroking his hair and keeping him in her arms. Safe. “He’ll go away. Don’t worry. You’re safe here.” Roger nods, but he keeps his eyes closed. He wants to be deeper now. He wants to stop hearing voices and the click of shoes against the floor and the rhythmic beat of machines. Deeper until her face is no longer just a shadow and her nails are the perfect red.

 

The voice stops just like she promises and Roger can relax again. He turns in her arms, forehead resting against hers and she’s so warm it sinks into his skin, makes his body feel like it’s burning. “I…”

 

She smiles and Roger can smile back. It feels like the first time in ages that he’s smile. Why would anyone want to pull him out of here, when he can smile like this, not having to force it, and everything is all right? “See, I told you baby,” she says, kissing him before sliding out of bed. No, she doesn’t slide out of bed, but she isn’t in his arms anymore either but he doesn’t panic, because here everything is perfect and people don’t just leave. “Come on…”

 

Roger turns around, and there she is standing and waiting at the door, still smiling at him. “I…” He starts to stand, not even getting half way up when she appears at the bed, offering her hand and pulling him up, tugging him out of the room.

 

“Come on…”

 

Roger laughs, not that she could really hear it in the loud crowd as the concert empties out. She turns to smile at him, and Roger laughs again, letting this small girl hold his hand tighten enough that he can’t feel the blood in his fingers as she drags him along, weaving in and out of the hordes of drunken college students. “Come on… You can go faster than that!”

 

Laughing again, Roger jogs to catch up with her, and the girl squeals in delight as he changes them around, pulling her out of the crowd until they have a spot on the sidewalk all their own. Breathless and laughing with each other, they fall into step, Roger’s arm wrapped around her tiny frame. He doesn’t know her, and maybe it’s just the alcohol and the excitement of seeing such a fucking fantastic concert, but he could be in love with this girl. “Hey,” he says suddenly as she drops against him, head resting on his shoulder. “What’s your name?”

 

She twists her head and beams up at him. God, she has a beautiful smile and Roger has to laugh, a good laugh not because she looks funny but because tonight is too good not to laugh a little. “I’ll let you guess,” she says, prodding him gently in the side, and he laughs at that, too, swatting at her hand before leaning down to kiss her. It isn’t weird. Just a few minutes ago, screaming at the band on stage, she’d climbed up onto his shoulders without even a word and Roger had held her up, letting the band get a good look at her as she stripped off her shirt. After that a simple kiss seems tame.

 

She giggles against his lips, kissing him back before it gets too be too much and she leans back against his shoulder, hot breath on his skin as she laughs. “You’re insane.”

 

“You’re the one climbing up onto strange guys to give bands a free strip tease,” Roger points out, squeezing this girl closer to him, which doesn’t go like planned. Both of them are shitfaced, and this squeeze only helps to make them loser their balance. They stumble down the sidewalk, and Roger just laughs again as the girl squeals and clings to him.

 

“You ass!” She screams, smiling at him as she cuffs him in the stomach, and Roger just nips playfully at her, knocking her hand away but keeping his arm tight around her waist. “Don’t do that.”

 

“Sorry,” he says without meaning it. She’s cute when she’s trying not to giggle, and when it doesn’t work and she ends up giggling anyway, and when she leans into him, nuzzling against his shoulder. Really, everything about her is cute, and Roger can feel his jeans tightening as she rubs against him on their walk to who the fuck cares where. Product of being a teenage boy with a cute stranger hanging off his arm. “What’s your name again?”

 

“I told you to guess!” She says, kissing her chin as she wraps her thin arms around him and they struggle to stay up again. It doesn’t matter if they fall over, Roger figures, because this right here is amazing even if it ends up with him falling onto the concrete and being trampled. It’d still be fucking amazing. “And if you guess right, I’ll give you a kiss,” she offers with a bright smile, and Roger licks his lips as he stares down at her drunk bliss expression. He could guess her name for a kiss.

 

“Uh…” Roger bites his lip, and then ends up laughing because she is watching him and laughs at that, and it’s all contagious. Everything is good. “Uh….” Fishing through his mind, hard to do when it’s swimming in beers, he manages to pull out a few names of girls he knows. “Are you a… Jenny? Or Susan? Or Amanda? Or Tracy? Or…”

 

“No!” She squeals, giggling again. Probably they’re driving all those people in their apartments as they walk by insane, laughing loudly into the night and being happy not having to worry about kids or family or jobs in the morning. Roger couldn’t give a shit about any of those things or people and what they think of them right now as they break their peaceful night. “Do I look like a Sue?”

 

Roger squints, concentrating hard as he can as he takes a good look at this shirtless girl tucked under his arm, wild brown hair and deep brown eyes that are hazed over with alcohol, lips a bright pink from heavy make up, clothes torn up but obviously with just a touch of punk. No, she doesn’t look like a Sue or a Jenny or any girl that Roger knows. “Well who are you?”

 

“I’m a month!” The girl announces loudly, laughing as some guy hollers at her and moving closer to Roger, knee brushing against the front of his jeans. He might blush, if he weren’t so drunk that he couldn’t get embarrassed about anything. He’s just blissful. Just perfect.

 

“You’re a month?” He asks, beaming down at her as she laughs and puts her hand against his jeans. He’s just this seventeen year old down from Maine to see a band play, and here is this gorgeous girl groping him in the middle of the street. Roger has never had a better day. “You mean, like, you’re January?”

 

“No,” she giggles, taking another swat at him and Roger laughs as he falls against the wall, feet shaking underneath him. Way too drunk to drag his ass back to his dad’s lent out car. The girl smiles, falling against him, body warm. No, burning. Body burning and making Roger’s blood boil up as she presses into him. “Who names their kid January?”

 

“I don’t know,” Roger admits with a shrug, swallowing hard as his head starts to spin and this girl moves just a little, body brushing against his. Making Roger almost fall to his ass as he tenses up against the heat. “I… Uh…”

 

“My name?” She asks with a giggle as she watches Roger stutter and stumble around. “Figured it out yet?”

 

“Uh…” Roger couldn’t really think before, and now he cab hardly form a sentence but a kiss and a month and that’s all he can think. “May?”

 

“Close,” she mutters and he can taste her breath already. It taste like beer and smoke, and it tastes better when she leans up, smashing their lips together. Roger’s kissed before, but never so drunk he couldn’t stand up and it’s clumsy and sloppy, but the girl keeps kissing him until finally he leans against the wall and pulls back, panting hard and body burning up beneath hers. “I’m…”

 

“April?”

 

Roger looks around the loft. Messier than usual, junk everywhere. The bear his dad had spent him when he forgot that Roger was turning seven, not three. The suitcase he’d packed up in when he ran away from home the day after graduation. The first guitar he ever held. He has to walk over it all, and more stuff keeps adding into the piles. “April?” He calls out, kicking at the junk as if she’s hiding in the heaps of trash that has collected on the loft floor.

 

Stepping around an old soccer trophy, Roger turns around to look through the loft. Spotless and bright, he can see every inch but there is no April. She had just been pulling him out of the room. Where did she run off? Is she hiding, playing some sort of game? “Apr-“

 

Roger is looking at the bathroom door, watching the knob rattle around. Swallowing hard he takes a careful step closer, keeping a watch on the knob. It rattles again, louder, the sound ringing through the loft. “April?”

 

Roger shouts, dropping to his knees as the scream tears through him, ripping at the air and he can barely breath with that sound, the worst thing he’s ever heard. The door is shaking, being pushed at, locked. “April!” Roger runs at the door, yanking at the knob and he can’t move the door and the scream, she’s screaming for him louder and louder and desperate please, get the door open, and he can’t even make it budge.

 

… Cardiac… Call Doctor…

 

No, no not now. Go away. Deeper, he needs to be deeper and open the damn door. “April!”

 

Get out..…. Move… Red… He isn’t…

 

Fuck, her scream is like a shock to the chest. No reaction. One… Two… Ready… God, it hurts it hurts make it stop open the door. She keeps screaming and clawing but he can’t make it open and the voices of the nurses and – fuck, not now. He needs to get to her. He needs to. Make her stop screaming. Make them shut up. Fuck, please. It hurts.

 

April! He’s reacting. His heartbeat is evening out. No, not now. Go away.

 

April! Vitals are stabilizing. Please, open the door.

 

April…. Heat. Shock. Body shaking and the light coursing through him. Please, April. He’s stabling. Open…

 

“It’s okay.”

 

The ceiling is pale white, perfectly blank; the light from the window makes it almost glow. Roger watches his fan turning the air slowly. It’s still stifling in his room, but the damn thing can’t turn any faster. He looks over to April, who smiles as she snuggles closer despite the heat. “You’re okay.”

 

He’s okay. They’re okay, just resting in his room, safe here from the rest of the world. He leans against her, head resting on her chest and April strokes his hair like she always has. “Just stay here with me,” she whispers, kissing the top of his head, and why would Roger ever leave her or this room or this place, where it’s nice and quiet and calm, even if a little hot. “You’re okay here, baby.”


	2. Act Two

**Scene Three**

  


“What happened?”

  


When Angel had been in the hospital, everything seemed calmer. Maybe because Mark never let it touch him as much, wished it would all just go away and tried not to pay attention to how sick she looked. Maybe she just had a calming presence, and so the panicked rush of the hospital staff never seemed as bad. Maybe Roger just has the ability to stir up shit wherever he goes, but Mark never had to do this with Angel.

  


He is standing in the hallway outside his friend’s room, particularly screaming at the passing nurses to get their attention. At least it feels like he’s screaming at them, and they just walk by without a word in this rush in and out of the room, yelling instructions to each other that Mark doesn’t understand.

  


“Excuse me…” He grabs for one or tries but can’t seem to get his limbs working. “Hey! Wait, what happened? Is he… Hey…” Mark keeps watching them walk past, trying desperately to get their attention and not let out the scream that is boiling in his throat. Calm down, he tells himself. He should be practiced at this. Disengage, and just wait for the news. But Mark can’t get there. It’s his best friend, damnit, why is nobody paying attention to him when he’s trying to figure out if Roger…

  


“Fuck, what the hell is going on in there!” Mark snaps at the next poor guy that walks by and he nearly jumps back as Mark blocks his way, eyes narrowed because he hates this guy and this hospital and everything that proves just how sick Roger is getting.

  


“Sir,” the guy says in this just as pissed off voice and it makes Mark even more determined to hit someone if they keep this up. “You have to get out of the way. The patient is suffering from mild cardiac arrest-“ He keeps talking, but nothing really gets through.

  


“What!” Mark doesn’t make it past that. Roger’s heart stopped. That’s what cardiac arrest is, right? Maybe he’s wrong, maybe… Oh, God. Oh God. Oh. God. “What’s going on?”

  


“Sir.” Strong hands push against his chest, trying to push him back as Mark tries to get to the door and to Roger. What the fuck does that mean? Calm down? They just said that his heart had stopped. “We’re doing what we can. Calm down.”

  


“But... Roger.” No one seems to get that Mark needs to be there, and Roger can’t die like this. He is a rock star, or supposed to be, and is to Mark. Rock stars don’t die like this.

  


Then there is some nurse, her hand replacing the strong ones. Kate. She’s familiar. She was here for Angel and Mimi and, well, she’ll probably be here for Roger. She’s a good person, hard to find in New York, and Mark turns on her and almost throws her against the wall. Or, well, no. He’s too shut off for that, but it feels like he should. Like he should be angry enough to scream and throw a fit and keep knocking people away until someone does something.

  


Instead he’s still and silent, looking up at Kate with a dead sort of expression. He feels outside himself and this whole mess, just like he wanted. He fucking hates himself for it.

  


“Mark,” she says, her kind voice trying to be gentle for him. She’s probably dealt with a lot worse, and Mark isn’t even fighting anymore. He just doesn’t have that sort of energy. “Think of what Dr. Klien.”

  


He hates that he feels calm. Disgusted with himself that it’s so easy to shut himself down and not think about what Roger is going through. He’s fucking horrible for not letting himself get caught up in this and turn to an emotional mess, but he’s got to stop or else he’s going to do something distract. Kate smiles, seems to approve of this shut off Mark even if he can barely stand himself. “We’re doing all we can, just be calm.”

  


*

  


The first time that Mark remembers being in a hospital, the first thing he remembers heading a doctor say is, “We’re doing all we can.”

  


Mark is too young, only ten years old. He doesn’t really understand what that means. To him it sounds good, like the doctors are helping, but when the man in the white coat tells them this, his mom starts to cry again. On the small plastic chair that squeaks as he rocks to keep himself entertained, he reaches up to tug at his mom’s arms. “What is it? What’s wrong with aunt Miriam?”

  


His mom, still crying, reaches down to pat Mark’s head. She knows he hates this, and usually Mark would scowl at her but right now she looks so upset, he lets her cry and pet him and doesn’t try and push her away. She needs it. Even a ten year old can see that.

  


“Mom?” He asks, pulling at her again. He isn’t trying to upset her. He’s just curious why she took him and Cindy out of school to rush over to the hospital to see her sister. He doesn’t even know his aunt that well. He’d only meet her once or twice, and she always had this plump, red face that kind of scared him. His mom wouldn’t let them stay at her house.

  


But on the whole car ride she was crying, and now she is crying hard and Mark doesn’t understand why. He’s just trying to figure out what’s wrong with his mom.

  


He would have kept tugging but Cindy with her long acrylic nails that pinch at his skin grabs Mark’s arm, making him yelp as she pulls him back. “Look, Mark,” she says, pulling him over to the corner away from mom. Mark looks at his mom and then to his sister. He doesn’t think he should leave mom alone, but Cindy has this serious look that means Mark should pay attention. Dad used that look a lot. Cindy is older and smarter, so Mark tries his best not to pay attention to mom’s sobbing and listen to her. “Mom is really upset. How would you feel if I were in a car crash and dying?”

  


“Not good,” he mutters, looking back to mom. She didn’t seem to spend that much time with Miriam anyway, so Mark doesn’t see why she’s crying so hard that she is shaking and looks like she is going to topple over.

  


“Exactly,” Cindy says, tightening her nails in his arm to pull his attention back. “So she doesn’t need you whining and bugging her, okay?” Mark bites his lip, bites back the whine that is forming in his throat because Cindy’s nails hurt. He doesn’t want to make his mom cry more, though, so he nods and listens to his sister. “You just stay quiet and stay back here, okay? Give her some space,” Cindy tells him, and Mark nods again. He might just be ten, but he knows when he needs to be adult. “None of this bothering her. She doesn’t need that.”

  


Cindy lets go, and they both settle into their chairs, not looking at their mom as she cries. Mark watches his feet kicking back and forth instead, and wonders about the car crash and why, if he isn’t supposed to do anything, mom pulled him out of school. It had been science class, and he always liked that part.

  


Once or twice his stomach growls, or he opens his mouth and looks at mom, but then Cindy glares down at him and he shuts up quickly. Be good, he reminds himself, letting his bored mind wander over school and the magazine pile next to him. He picks it up, reads about how to lose ten pounds in two weeks, puts it back down. His stomach growls and he opens his mouth again before Cindy swats his shoulder.

  


“Not right now,” she hisses, and Mark slides down in his seat, hands over his tummy as he waits.

  


Dad rushes after it feels like they’ve been there forever and Mark is so bored that he is bouncing in the plastic chair, which makes his sister glare harder at him. Their parents huddle together, dad whispering as mom starts sobbing all over again. He’s never seen mom cry before and it feels weird. He can’t even look at her, so he stares at the ground and counts tiles and tries to think of other things. Even the spelling test they had today was more fun than this, sitting in total silence and trying not to bother his mom.

  


After what Mark is sure must be four whole days or waiting, a small girl with a clipboard comes out, looking around the almost empty room with them and two strange men and small baby in her mom’s lap. She calls, “Mrs. Cohen?”

  


His mom has to wipe off her cheeks, lip wobbling as she stands herself up, or clings to dad while he stands them both up. Mark watches Cindy, who is watching their parents. He does what she does, standing when she stands and walking closer to mom and dad with her, copying her every move so that he gets it right. He still can’t look at his mom, even when she has an arm wrapped around his shoulder tight enough to break him in two.

  


“We’re sorry,” the woman says with this smile that doesn’t look at all happy. Mark is watching Cindy, sees her face fall and he tries to mimic that as well. “We did all we could.”

  


*

  


He isn’t even sure how he makes it to the counselor’s office. Kate has her slender arm wrapped around his shoulders, whispering something to him that is probably supposed to comfort him. “Thanks,” Mark mutters without meaning it, voice sounding hollow and detached from him as Kate sits him down in the chair, promising that Dr. Klien will be right with him. And that everything will be okay and that they’re doing what they can.

  


Roger’s okay. Heart stopped… It isn’t making sense in his head because if his heart stopped how can he be okay and… And…

  


That feeling of impassiveness snaps and the panic rushes back in to fill it before Mark can even draw in a calming breath to try and get his center back. It’s his best fucking friend who is in there dying! Why the fuck isn’t someone telling him what is going on! Why are they pushing him into this office with this counselor he hates. What about Roger? Mark needs to know about his best friend, needs to make sure he’s okay.

  


They don’t understand his best friend and there is no way they’re doing this right. It’s probably just Roger being a jerk because he he’s like that sometimes, hurting himself when he wants to hurt others. Mark could make him stop, he should tell someone that.

  


Only he knows it isn’t a trick and that Roger can’t just snap himself out of it whenever he wants.

  


“Mark…” The counselor is there in the chair next to him, trying to get Mark to breathe, maybe, because it seems like he can’t get in any air. Roger isn’t going to wake up.

  


Fuck. It hits him hard and there goes all the air in his lungs. Roger isn’t going to wake up. He feels himself falling back into that safe feeling and half of him is struggling against it. Now isn’t the time to disconnect. Roger isn’t going to wake up.

  


“Mark,” the guy keeps saying, like somehow repeating his name enough if going to make Mark give a fuck about whatever he is trying to say. “Why don’t you start working on what we talked about?”

  


What did they talk about? Mark shakes his head, not because he wants to disagree with the guy but he doesn’t care right now. Roger might not wake up, this might be it and it really hits. Slams into him and settles onto his chest. No wonder he can’t breathe. The counselor pats Mark’s back and all he wants to do is scream at the guy to go. The fuck. Away. He can’t do that, though, so he’s stuck being treated like a five year old who lost a pet.

  


“Try thinking back to what you and Roger enjoyed doing together,” the counselor coaxes, hand still on Mark’s back making it even more apparently to Mark that he wants nothing more than to hit the guy right now unless he gets the fuck away from him and leaves him and his emotional problems alone.

  


The hand rubs at his back, sweater dragging along Mark, irritating his skin. The guy says, “Try and remember the good times.” Mark takes a deep breath, finally able to get to the air, and closes his eyes. Inwardly he’s chanting, don’t hit the guy. Don’t hit the guy. Don’t hit the guy…

  


*

  


Mark doesn’t think about Roger. He doesn’t think he could take it. That would be too close to accepting the truth about what is happening, and Mark is terrified that if he listens to this guy, whatever is tethering Roger to him will snap.

  


Besides, this asshole doesn’t know Roger. The best times where when exactly? The drugs? The suicide? Running away and leaving Mark to deal with the realization of what his best friend being positive means after seeing it happen to Angel and knowing it was unavoidable? Pick a moment. Mark doesn’t want to.

  


He thinks about her instead.

  


She had golden brown hair, or at least she did in science class when they sat next to the giant windows and the light from outside would bounce of her curls. She wore skirts to her ankles and her hair in a messy bun pinned to her head. She had giant glasses that covered her cute little face and slid down her cute little nose. She had the biggest chest in all of seventh grade.

  


Her name was Janie White, the perfect name for such a perfect little girl. She is the reason that Mark had to stay in class for a few minutes after the last bell, or else everyone would see that his pants were way too tight.

  


In lunch she sat next to him with her plain brown paper bag with her sandwich without meat and she would say, “I’m a bohemian angel.”

  


After a few weeks of this, finally Mark works up the courage to say something. First he swallows his bite of chicken salad. Then he takes a long drink so his voice doesn’t smell horrible. “You’re a what.”

  


Janie’s face, Mark will always remember this, it just lights up. Like she’d been waiting all her life for someone to ask. “A bohemian angel,” she says, head bobbing with this pent up girlie happiness that makes her even cuter. “That’s what my sister calls me!”

  


“Oh… What’s that?” He asks, looking at Janie curiously, with that concentrated look of someone who is just hitting puberty and isn’t staring down the girl’s shirt.

  


“It’s…” Janie stops, her cute little face wrinkled up in thought. “It’s what my sister is and what she says I am, too. Bohemian.”

  


It’s the first time that Mark would really hear the word bohemian. It’s also the first time Mark would have his hand up a girl’s shirt in the back of the band room as his and Janie’s glasses clank together in what feels at once like the most amazing and awkward kiss ever. That was a good year and a year filled with firsts.

  


“You know what you are?” There are better years that are complex and contradictory and horrible all at the same time. “You’re my Bohemian Angel, huh? Aren’t you?” There is a year full of lasts. Last year that he let himself get sucked into some dumb classroom with a bunch of teachers who have no idea what things really mean. Last year that he puts up with his dad’s shit and finally moves to the city where he can be free to create.

  


Last year of April, although no one knew that back then.

  


“What?” She shouts back, her brown hair bobbing up around her face, her eyes bright with... Well, not just the lights of the club, but Mark doesn’t say anything about it. He’s just escape tyranny and he doesn’t want to seem like some clueless yuppie so to each their own. Drugs aren’t that dangerous anyway, he tells himself and starts to believe it so he never says a word when Roger and April share this weird, dazed overlook.

  


“You,” Roger says with this bright, in love sort of smile as he leans up to kiss her nose. No two people have ever fit together like April and Roger did when they were high. On nights like these they were perfect, soul mates. Other nights, sober nights, aren’t so easy on them but no one says anything about those, either. Too each their own, Mark chants in his head until he’s talk himself into it. “You are my Bohemian Angel.”

  


“Shut up!” April shrieks, slapping Roger’s arm. It just makes him laugh. It makes everyone at the small table in the back of this loud bar laugh, though you can’t really hear it over the music. Roger and Mark and Maureen and the shadowy figure of a guy right behind them who gives April and Roger this look. The kind of look you give your prey.

  


It’s like April and Roger can’t see him at all. Mark can, and in his memory this guy is a burning hole where Roger and April’s life could have been. He can remember ever smile that guy ever gave Mark, like he’s sharing some secret. The way his eyes jumped from place to place in this nervous twitch. Those are the things you remember in detail.

  


He could have gotten up and punch this guy in the face, tell him to leave his best friend alone. It’s already too late, but he wants to imagine he could stop it.

  


Only is a memory, and you can’t change those. So Mark starts sitting with Maureen close to him, dancing in her seat and humming along to the music. There are no drugs there, well expect pot if that even counts, but she’s just as bright as the other two. She makes him think that nothing in the world could be more perfect than this moment.

  


April leans in, nose wrinkled in a bright smile. “You’re such a girl.”

  


“I’m the girl?” Roger asks, laughing as he rubs their noses together and both of them break into giggles. Mark turns away from the man standing right over their shoulders, smiling at them as they almost collapse onto his shoulder.

  


It all feels good and right, but somehow it doesn’t calm Mark down. That can’t be his best memory of Roger. He doesn’t even want to be thinking about Roger. He doesn’t want to remember about all the good times. Fuck Dr. Klien. He is rebellious. He is bohemian. He doesn’t have to accept anything, not even… Especially not this.

  


He wants to be thinking about cute little Janie who sat there in science glass pushes her glasses up her nose, giving Mark these shy little smiles every time the teacher looked away.

  


He smiles back then looks down at the small dictionary he’d checked out from the library, flipping through the BIs, trying to find to BOs. Bohemian… Bohemian… Bohemian… His face lights up as his finger finally lands against the word, right there in small print staring back at him is all the answers in the world about little Jaine White.

  


  1. A native of Bohemia.



  


Mark wrinkles his nose, looking from the page of the book and back to Janie. She doesn’t look like she is from Bohemia. He doesn’t really know where that is, though, but he figured he’d know if she was because it seems like that would be located somewhere in Asia, maybe. Or Hawaii.

  


  1. The Czech language, esp. as spoken in Bohemia.



  


Again, he is pretty sure that that isn’t what Janie’s sister means when she calls her a Bohemian Angel. Janie would have mentioned speaking Bohemian, right?

  


  1. A Gypsy.



  


That might be it, Mark thinks. Maybe she means it like Janie’s a cute gypsy. She is cute, and she does wear those skirts that are kind of maybe gypsish. Mark doesn’t know what a gypsy is, really, expect from cartoons. Still, maybe that is what it means.

  


  1. A person, as an artist or writer, who lives and acts free of regard for conventional rules and practices.



  


It clicked into place with Mark. He didn’t really know what bohemia was more than what he read in the dictionary. He does not know Puccini or Ginsberg or any great artists, but he knows that Janie is a bohemian angel and that he likes her, and that the definition sort of sounds cool. So it becomes his favorite word, his movement, his.

  


He knows that April is Roger’s bohemian angel, wild and free and a total disregard for conventional rules. Everyone knew that, and maybe without April, Roger would have never gotten sick but without April, Mark can’t imagine there would be a Roger at all.

  


Not the same Roger with this wonderful smile that wrinkles up his cheeks as he lays sprawled out over the seat, head resting on Mark’s shoulder and April resting on Roger. “You’re my-“

  


No.

  


This isn’t what he wants to remember.

  


*

  


“Roger?”

  


There are new machines hooked up around him, crowding him like long lost friends watching him die. They beep louder and worse than ever. At least they’ve finally let Mark in to see him. Well, see what is left of him. The sort of pale and sallow body of his best friend. Mark closes his eyes, trying to summon up what Roger use to look like and replace the body in the bed with a better picture. Of him on stage at a show maybe, and how beautiful he’d been back then.

  


He can’t do it. This is pretty much Roger now.

  


Sighing, he brushes a hand through Roger’s tangled mane hair. Long and brown after being sick for so long, the edges still bleached out. They haven’t had much time to take care of it, lately. Maureen keeps swearing she’ll cut it the next time she comes in, no matter what the orderlies tell her. Mark doesn’t mind it so much. It makes him look like Kurt Cobain. Roger would probably like that.

  


“Roger?” He isn’t sure why he’s bothering to talk. Roger can’t hear him. Mark would like to believe that. Mark would like to believe that Roger is all but dead and this is just dragging it out. He would like to believe that it is stupid to be here, and then he could just walk away and never look back because he knows his best friend is dead and there is nothing he can do. He would like to believe that this is it, because that would be easier than watching Roger clinging to life and leaving Mark clinging to hope.

  


Right now, stroking Roger’s hair, he really wants to believe that but there is this fucking part of him that can’t. That is so fucking stupid that it believes Roger will hear him and snap out of this and be okay. Like magic, he’ll have his best friend back.

  


It’s even worse than Roger being dead, because at least then Mark doesn’t keep himself up all night waiting. This small idea that has wormed its way into him says that maybe one day Roger will be fine. It’s going to kill him when he isn’t.

  


Still, Mark strokes his hair back to clear Roger’s face, so that if he does wake up he won’t look like a total mess. Not that Roger ever really cared if he looks like a mess. He spent most of his time padding around the loft naked in the summer, having been sweating all week and without a shower. No, Roger was used to being a mess. Mark just figures, if he does wake up…

  


“It must be nice,” he says, grabbing his jacket and his camera. All the things he keeps by Roger’s bed, since he is here almost every day anyway. “Whatever you’re dreaming about. But you can wake up. I just want you to know... You can wake up now.”

* * *

  


  


**Scene Four**

  
  


“What…” The hospital room is dark gray, almost black but more like darkness made visible. Like a shadow, moving around in and around him. Where he is? This isn’t where he wants to be. This isn’t the bedroom with April and safety. This is some hospital bed, creaking under his wait and covered in the dark.

  


“This is a journey.”

  


“What?” Roger sits up, looking around the room for the voice. Familiar, echoing around the fluid, dark gray walls. His own voice, he can hear it, but he isn’t saying anything. Just thinking it really loud. “What the hell?”

  


Angel smiles as she sits down next to him, wearing that dress from after Valentine’s day when her and Collins stopped by the loft with alcohol and half priced chocolates. It moves around her waist in a puddle of blue as she sits beside him with a knowing look, a look of peace and worry. Confusing him even more. She’s color against the dark gray that moves and shifts around them.

  


Roger wants to scream at her. You aren’t April, this isn’t right. He wants to go back. Deeper now, back to his girl.

  


Before he can escape, Angel is grabbing his hand, squeezing hard enough to keep him here, half here and half back in the room. Unsure where he is. “I want you to think of this like a journey.” He jerks away but his hand stays under hers, and he screams, loudly, yelling at for her to get the hell away and let him go back, but not a sound. The only thing he can hear in the room is Angel’s voice telling him, “It’s your head, Roger, you have to get through this.”

  


“Where’s April?” He needs her. He can bring her back, wants to hold her and be safe. Roger looks around the shadow walls looming over him for sight of April. Deeper. He can pull her out of those walls.

  


The slap to the back of his head doesn’t hurt, nothing really hurts, but it gets his attention. “Look at me, chico,” Angel says and Roger looks over at her with her water dress and steady color. She doesn’t look so much at peace as annoyed now. “I want you to get out, go back home. People miss you. You know this isn’t right.”

  


Roger looks up at the ceiling. Terrifying as it shifts, looking ready to crash down on him. He should be able to stop it. It’s in his head. He should be able to find April, lie next to her, be safe. It’s his head, he has control. He just needs to fight this away, deeper, find his girl.

  


“I don’t want to.” The ceiling slides down, back up, crashes into each other. Like blood through the veins, flowing along. He should be able to control this. It’s his world, he can make it stop. Make it safe.

  


No blood, no shadows. Safe.

  


“I want April.” Go away! Go away, go and leave me here. Mine, my mind, mine. He can stop the ceiling. He can bring her back.

  


Angel stares him down, blue dress blue eyes. Light hair. “Roger, get out.”

  


“No!” He can push out the blood, he can get to his girl. He can stop this all. His world, his rules, his control. Mine. “Leave me alone!” Bouncing off the unsettled walls, repeating even after Roger’s quieted. Leave me. Alone leave me.

  


“Roger!” Leave me. Bright blue eyes behind glasses, Angel reaching for him, as unsteady as the walls. Leave. Unsteady as Roger’s thoughts, clawing out of his head. April. Alone. Leave. “Roger…”

  


Can’t think of him. Her. Please, April, save me. Leave me alone.

  


“I want to be with her…”

  


Susan Davis looks up at the sky, lips moving as if asking God what she possibly did to deserve this. She loves her son, she really does and she loves him even though sometimes he can act too much like Charlie. Just sometimes, sometimes he works down her nerves and she has to take a second to mutter things up at the clouds in hopes that lightening will randomly streak out of the nearly clear sky and shot her down. Just for an hour or two of really good sleep.

  


There is no lightening, and Susan can’t help but wonder what that means. You think the weather could take time out of lazing about to pay attention to the overworked single mother of an unruly teenage son every now and then.

  


Roger knows all of this because he’s seen her do it all before.

  


Standing outside the junior high school where she works, Roger crosses his arms and pouts at his mom as he waits for her to say something, making him look like he’s eight rather than eighteen. “Well?”

  


“What do you want me to say Roger?” She asks, taking a long draw of her cigarette, and Roger knows she needs something to do with her hands so that she doesn’t do anything drastic before she has time to think it through. Right now he wants to grab the cigarette from her hand, force her to look at him and actually do something other than stare up and smoke. He wants drama and over reaction, something to prove that she’s as reluctant about this as he is. Someone needs to be sensible and tell Roger to snap the fuck out of this.

  


As much as Roger wants to be the rebel, he’s scared shitless about this whole idea and he just wants his mom, of all people, to talk some sense into him. Tell him he’s being childish, tell him that he needs to think about this. He wants her to say that she loves him, and she is doing what’s best for him by keeping him here in fuck all, Auburn instead of letting him run off to New York with nothing but his guitar and a bag of clothes.

  


Susan exhales the smoke slowly and Roger just glowers at it as it hits the hair, curling around them. A lame excuse for not answering and they both know it. “You’re just like your dad…”

  


He almost screams. He does, but they’re standing outside a middle school with students walking around and, besides, Roger doesn’t scream at his mom. He loves, her and knows she’s too stressed for screaming. Without his mom he wouldn’t be able to play the piano, much less the guitar. He wouldn’t know how to sneak into movie theaters or the second act of plays with out a ticket stub. He wouldn’t know Puccini or Wagner or Shostakovich, and he wouldn’t know how to play all of the Ramones, the Beatles, and the Seeds. He wouldn’t be able to make chocolate chip pancakes and he wouldn’t have asked Sarah Carter to the prom and without his mom, Roger would be totally useless.

  


That is what he needs her to tell him right now. He’s scared that he’s messing up, throwing his life away and he just needs someone to try and stop him. He’s supposed to be the bad ass, no holds bar rebel and all he wants is for his mom to ground him so that none of this is his fault.

  


Instead Susan takes another drag of her cigarette and says, “Your dad always had these big ideas, too. Marry the girl, run off to paradise, become an… I don’t even know. He never really made it that far.”

  


Again, Roger is holding back the screams with all these tiny thirteen and younger kids swarming around him, buzzing on about how fucking mean their parents are because they won’t let them stay out all night. Please, mom, just this once don’t start talking about dad and tell me what to do.

  


“You’re just like him, honey,” she says, running a hand through Roger’s newly cut hair. She’s told him she hates it, but he did it anyway and she didn’t say a word. She never does, and most kids would love a mom like her. Roger loves her, he does. Just he’s terrified and she is smoking and not saying a word to help calm him down or talk him out of this jump. “You even have the same pout,” she says, smiling at Roger like it’s funny to be teasing him now.

  


Roger just groans, knocking her hand away and leaning back against the wall, pouting down at the sidewalk. He can’t think of anything else to say that won’t end in him storming off or his mom walking away and not coming back to the house all night. They have those fights, sometimes, and today might be Roger’s last day in this stupid town. He doesn’t want their last talk to end up in an argument. He doesn’t want to be his dad, no matter what she says about him. “I miss him…”

  


“I don’t care,” Roger growls, which isn’t the nicest thing to say but fuck it, if she isn’t going to help than he isn’t going to amuse her with her stories about how great his dad has been before he left. The guy never even came to one of Roger’s parties as a kid and he’s all she can talk about now, when Roger is getting ready to run away. He just stopped by to tell her he’s leaving and give her this one chance to do something about it.

  


Susan stomps out her cigarette, standing up off the wall and brushing herself off. “You be careful.” Roger doesn’t move when his mom brushes his hair back or leans down to kiss his forehead. That’s all she has to say about it? Be careful? “What’s this girl’s name again?”

  


“April,” Roger mutters, kicking at the cigarette on the sidewalk. April, the reason that he’s going to New York without a job and without a place to stay and he’s nervous as hell that this beautiful, dangerous girl is going to end up breaking him. He better be careful, his mom says. So terrified that he stayed up all night being sick and pacing in his room and she wants him to be careful.

  


“Well…” Susan messes with his hair a little more, and Roger just moves away from her hand. He isn’t sure what he wants, but this isn’t it. He wants to be in New York with this gorgeous girl and he wants to play his guitar and have a band and be famous and be in love. He wants his mom to tell him no, to hug him and say that he’s her baby and she isn’t going to let him just walk away from everything like this. He should have known better. His mom has never stopped anyone from walking away. “I hope she’s good for you…”

  


“You’re safe.” Red nails over his lips, dragging through the sweat on his skin as she traces wild designs over his cheeks. Sometimes she would spell words and have him guess. Now she’s just drawing, comforting him and calming down his racing heart. “You’re safe, so long as you stay here.”

  


In the bedroom. Safe. Roger looks at April. This beautiful, dangerous girl who smiles at him and keeps him safe. Here, he’s okay. He’s in control. Everything is okay. No worrying, no being scared. Her nails press against his skin, real as could be. Here everything is perfect.

  


He’s okay. Deep breathe. Deeper. He’s okay.

  


“No one ever tried to stop me…” The mirror on his door reflects their image back at him, two kids sprawled over the bed, swallowed whole by the blankets and pillows. Guarded against the rest of the world. Mirrors lining the walls, showing all around him, showing April’s feet against his and her lips near his ears and her nails on his skin. Too much. He doesn’t want to see himself. Too much, and their gone. Control. He’s safe.

  


“Shh,” she whispers, kisses his cheek. Never him, but his cheek or ear. Soft press of her lips to remind him that she’s here, just as real as he is. “Don’t think about them. You’re safe.”

  


Don’t think about blue eyes behind glasses or a wonderful smile from a small girl. None of that. No one tried to save him, they just tried to keep him away from her. April. Safe.

  


He’s okay.

  


“You never have to leave,” she whispers into his ear, voice dark and mellifluous, capturing him in its thickness and making it impossible to move. He doesn’t want to move.

  


The first time April leads him through her apartment she shows him the bedroom and winks and says, “We never have to leave if you don’t want.” She’s twenty two and fun and wild and Roger’s just this kid from Maine who blushes and laughs as he looks into the messy bedroom, and it’s a silly, flirty thing to say but he wishes it were true.

  


“I’m here,” April promises, too pink lips brushing along his skin, lip steak never streaking across his neck. The perfect scene and they’re alone in here, away from the world and doctors and tests and pieces of paper and razorblades. “That’s all you need.”

  


When Roger is struggling to write his music, and the band is getting on his nerves and complaining because if he’s their lead singer and songwriter shouldn’t he be giving them more songs to perform? Like he can just write this shit whenever he wants? And while he’s slaving over some fucked up love shit that he can’t force to sound right or real, April comes up behind him, long arms wrapped around his shoulders as she kisses down his neck. He swats at her and says he’s busy, he needs to do this, and she tells him, “It’s okay, baby. I’m all you need.”

  


Apparently he isn’t, because it isn’t him that she takes into the bathroom with her. It’s a note and a needle and the bathroom door is so white Roger can’t stare at it too long before his body starts to shake from the effort of not blinking.

  


Roger looks around the loft, spotless and empty save him, standing there looking at the bathroom door. Why did he get out of bed? Did he need something? He should be back in the bedroom with his girl.

  


He sets his hand on the door. The knob starts to shake. Small little rattles of someone trying to get out. Looking for a way out. Roger’s fingers curl up, scraping against the door. Clear, like a window as his fingers drag down, leaving three streaks of glass where the paint is peeled off.

  


The door starts to shake. Flashes of a girl in the streaks of glass. Let me out, Roger, please. Help. Save me.

  


“Roger?” Safe. He wants to be safe. He wants someone to save him, and no one ever did.

  


Roger looks back to the bedroom, door wide open and April up on the bed. Their fortress of pillows and blankets. She smiles and calls him back. Whatever she had him get up to get, it doesn’t matter anymore. He should just go back to bed and be with her. Always.

  


The door rattles. Roger steps back and towards April. Safe April. The April that loves him.

  


You have to, Roger, save me. Let me out. Please, Roger.

  


“Come here,” April calls and Roger walks back into the bedroom, shutting the door behind him. Crawling on to the bed, into April’s arms. Long arms that stretch around him and hold him in place. Let me out. No. Safe. No one ever tried to help Roger get back to her.


	3. Act Three

**Scene Five**

 

If he could get a little closer, no…

 

Closer, please. Mark can see his fingertips, stretched way beyond their limits, aching as they force themselves to stretch out. He isn’t even sure it’s possible, for fingertips to stretch, but in his mind he keeps chanting. Closer, closer, closer. Willing them to keep getting longer, getting there. Inch by inch by inch, if he could just reach a little further.

 

His hand keeps growing, pushing, trying so hard. Closer, closer. It’s right there, it’s right there in front of him and miles and miles away, but he knows if he could just get even a little closer, he could grab on.

 

Someone in the back of his mind keeps talking, and Mark wishes he would stop because he’s reaching, almost there, so close. He just needs to keep reaching out and he’ll make it, but the voice is there to bother him, prodding at him. Try and remember your friend how he was, part of the grieving process before you let go.

 

No, don’t let go. Keep reaching out, through the dark, until he can’t even see his arm around, his hand completely gone but he has to keep reaching. Keep going until he can pull him back. Find him.

 

“Jesus!” Mark opens his eyes to blinding white, and it takes a moment to adjust. He’s slumped over the hospital chair, arm fast asleep from where he was leaning on it all night, head still swimming with images. The dark is his head refuses to mesh with the horrible colors on the hospital walls.

 

In the background is the mechanical beat of Roger’s heart, and once again it hits Mark where he is, like it hits him every time he wakes up. Every now and then, especially when he’s fast asleep, it will slip out of his mind for just a moment. And then it hurts again, waking up to the same damn scene. Hospital scenes, they never last this long in the movies. It’s only ever for a quick shot or two, and then the person is dead or at home.

 

Right back here in limbo, the space between the next to acts where Roger is floating, or the thing that looks like Roger anyway. The thing wearing his skin, sagging and bruised and pale. The person with his long hair, grown out and curling around his face now. The thing Mark falls asleep next to, waiting for some sign of life, the movement of death. Anything, anything at all.

 

“So, this is what happens when you move out of your mother’s house? You start to curse like a Christian.”

 

Still shaken from waking up in the hospital, even after a week of waking up in the same damn chair, Mark takes his time to stretch out, trying to pop his spine back into place. He doesn’t know who would talk to him like that, but after so long of getting sleep only an hour or two at a time, after so long of watching his best friend turn into a fucking corpse that they have clinging to life just so Mark gets to witness every second of his death, he’s found his ability to give a shit about anything has been shot.

 

Being stuck in a rerun of the worst day of your life, every day, will do that to a person.

 

The guy who spoke to him is hunched over, leaning heavily on a cane. His skin is sagging and sallow, covered in lesions worse than even Roger’s. And he’s smiling, bright and kind, right at Mark. “David?”

 

“Hey there…” The guy, the walking death guy that happens to look like an uncle he once had and love sits next to him, shaking so hard he almost falls out of the chair. “You’re mom called, told me about… Roger, right?” He lays a hand on Mark’s and his skin is warm, but only barely. Other than that, it is like Roger’s hand, looking ready to snap off any moment, and yet he’s still smiling. Why does he keep smiling like that? “It’s nice to see you again, Mark…”

 

This is just a test, he realizes, to see if he could possible hurt anymore. Turns out he can.

 

*

 

Seventeen should be old enough to understand things, especially if you happen to be a seventeen year old who spends his summer locked away in his room watching foreign and indie movies, trying to copy the looks with his own camera. An Arriflex, Ari for short, and his first love to whom he writes love notes to in the form of trying to repeat what he sees on the screen of these small budget movies. Most of these movies are about sex, drugs, cousins loving cousins, government power abuse, family abuse, boys loving boys, war, terror, and more sex. They are not innocent movies, and Mark is hardly some naïve suburban kid. Sure, he spends time at the JCC doing family friendly activities like learning Hebrew and how to tango, but the things that really stick to him are black and white French films where everyone smokes and fucks.

 

His lips movie along with dialogue he doesn’t really understand. He pushes his glasses up his nose and gets this serious look, like he’s struggling to solve a math problem for his SATS, his entire future at stake. Honestly what he is thinking is how did the director get that shot? The camera couldn’t possible be pressed between them, could it?

 

Mark was far from an innocent seventeen year old boy. Not that many seventeen year olds are all that innocent, anyway. But at least he isn’t sitting around his room watching porn (well, not straight out porn, and not all the time) and somehow, it makes Mark feel like he’s more grown up than anyone around him, and he should be treated that way.

 

Still, his mom seemed to think he was an idiot, or at least still her little ten year old boy who thought that girls were gross and had never seen a pair of breasts up close. She seemed to think all him and Nanette ever did was tango, and even if she knew more happened, she was all to happy to repress the idea and go along thinking of Mark as a little kid.

 

As part of this denial, when Mark asks whatever happened to his uncle, his mom doesn’t even look at him. She just shrugs and says, “Oh, you know… What would you like for dinner, honey?” The kind of answer you would give a five year old when you wanted the, to stop asking so many questions about where babies come from.

 

Of course, nothing pisses of a teenager more than being treated like a child.

 

“Mooom…” And probably the whiny voice doesn’t help to make Mark’s point that he was an adult, Goddamnit. “Come on…” Mark had always been close to his uncle, possible because David did treat Mark like an adult, like filming wasn’t just some passing fad but a real passion. He even got Mark his first real camera, and so would always be mark in his mind as a Truly Great Man. Besides, David was just cooler than anyone at school, any other relative and not just because of the camera gift, or the fact that he willingly took Mark up to New York on day trips just to spend time in the city with him, or that he didn’t lie to Mark about the big stuff.

 

Well, as far as Mark knew.

 

“You already know he moved out to California with Robert.” Everyone called David’s boyfriend Robert. Never Robby like his friends, never his boyfriend or partner. No one even ever said roommate, since that could be too close to the truth. Just Robert. “I don’t know what else to tell you….” And then she went back to making dinner, ignoring him and shrugging the question off again. It just makes things worse.

 

“He hasn’t called.” Mark points out, slumping down in the chair at the table, pouting and generally acting like he was seven instead of seventeen. “And no one has talked to him in, like, a month. Isn’t that weird?” Only maybe it isn’t too weird, since no one really talked to David all that much anyway, other than Mark and occasionally his mom, but even she stopped talking to him and about him a while ago. It was like they were trying to phase his uncle out of his life.

 

Only David is the only person who listened to Mark talk about his films, the ones he hasn’t started yet but is planning on, the ones that will change the world. David is the one who showed Mark how to use a condom, bought him his first drink and sat him down to explain to him why Reagan was ruining the country. David was the only sane adult that Mark knew, and he wasn’t just going to forget about him.

 

“I don’t know what to tell you,” his mom said again, and Mark couldn’t keep arguing in circles all day. And then David never really did call, and Mark had his films and college and, eventually, his girlfriend and a sick roommate to take care of and just… life got in the way. It seems selfish, but it’s true, and when you‘re losing friends and lovers, you just have to add people to the list and move on.

 

Given enough time, everyone can be phased out to just a few memories.

 

*

 

“David….”

 

Mark still can’t believe this, even after swearing that nothing could shake him up. Fucking amazing what life will throw at you just to prove you wrong. This can’t be him and even if it is, how can Mark remember his face after this long? Sure, he has pictures and even films but, well, this isn’t David’s face.

 

It’s the same, almost, but beaten down, weathered out. Sick. This is too weird, too much. All of it spinning around in his head and making no sense at all. Fuck, he’s going to be sick. His stomach turns, but that is about it. Not like he’s eaten anything in two days. There is nothing to throw up.

 

The worst part is that this person, this corpse like person that could be David, just keeps smiling. It isn’t a bright, gorgeous smile, it’s the same smile Mark gets from everyone else. Pity, hurt for him, a sad and pathetic smile. “How are you holding up?”

 

“Where the fuck have you been?” Of all the things he could have said after seeing his uncle for the first time in, God, how many years now? Seven, right? Has David really been gone that long? Mark doesn’t feel any more grown up than he was seven years ago, holed up in his room with bad French films. A little more tired, but not much else.

 

David pulls his hand off Mark, placing it over his cane. The metal end wiggles under his trembling hands, banging against the hard linoleum. Mark doesn’t mind. At least it’s something to listen to other than the machines. “It was your parents decision,” he says, as if Mark understands what he’s talking about. “After I found out I was sick, they figured it would be best if you didn’t know. I mean… Eight years. No one lives eight years with this, Mark. We thought one, two at the most. You shouldn’t have to hear that.”

 

That only made it hurt worse, his head with all these new thoughts to take in. David is here. David is sick. David didn’t tell him because he didn’t think Mark could handle it. He’s just like everyone else in his life, lying to try and protect Mark like he was a kid. David is dying. David is saying all this right in front of his best friend, currently in a fucking coma. Why would he say this in front of Roger? Not that Roger can hear him, but why would he rub it in that he got eight years when Roger hardly gets four?

 

Mark doesn’t want to hate David, it’s just all so much to take in that his thoughts scramble up and come out like that. It’s unfair. He shouldn’t have to lose Roger, and David disappeared so long ago he might as well have already been lost.

 

It’s probably just his lack of sleep, even the urge to sleep is slowly dying out as his body becomes use to just sitting in place, staring down at Roger in wait, but he can’t really stop all the thoughts bouncing around in his head. It would be easier if David had died after a year or two, didn’t show up now and remind Mark that sometimes people pull through for longer than others, people like Collins. People like David. And then some people get to fucking waste away in a hospital bed, making their friends watch every agonizing second until they want to pull the plug themselves just to stop it from dragging out any longer.

 

It would just be so much easier if every just died already and Mark didn’t have to punish himself by watching.

 

“Your mom called,” David continues after the long pause, where Mark can’t speak because anything he said right now would be hurtful, and he wouldn’t really mean it. At least he has enough sense to keep his mouth closed, not letting all those loss thoughts escape. “She told me about Roger… She’s worried about you.”

 

Sometimes it feels like everyone is worried about him, and no one is worried about Roger. Maybe everyone else has given up. Maybe everyone else is smarter than Mark is, and why he hates himself for clinging to this idea of Roger, the passionate and life filled Roger who could never, ever die because rock stars don’t die, maybe everyone else is right. On some level, Mark knows they are, and he wants so bad to just move on.

 

You’re dead, Roger. He wants to scream it. He wants to tear out all the little cords that are supposed to be keeping him alive. He wants to move on like everyone else has. He wants so much.

 

You’re dead, and I’m stupid for sitting here, waiting for a dead person to wake up.

 

“You look like you need sleep…” How can David just come into his life like this and tell him what he needs to do? Mark knows what he needs to do, and even if he hadn’t figured out by now that eating and sleeping and moving on where what would be good for him, he has plenty of people to tell him that every day. David didn’t need to fly all the way back to New York and nearly give his nephew a heart attack, ruin his opinion of him, just to tell him he needs some more sleep. “Why don’t you go home for a few hours, get some sleep, take a shower…”

 

“David.” Mark doesn’t mean to snap like that. He’s not a bad guy. He’s nice and goofy and, yeah, a little to obsessed with his film that sometimes he forgets things like eating, showering, his girlfriend, but he’s a nice guy. At least he likes to think he is, or was before he spent so much time trapped in a small hospital room with a corpse. “Look, if you came back just to tell me what to do…”

 

“No…” David sighs, running a hand through what little hair he has left. He might still be able to walk, but he doesn’t look much better than Roger. Finally, it hits Mark, the hurt and the pity and no, he doesn’t want this man to die. He doesn’t want to see his uncle sick. He loves his uncle, he owes everything to him, meeting Roger and Collins and just being himself instead of being yet another suburban kid with a good job and good home and all that shit.

 

Maybe his parents did the right thing, not telling him. He doesn’t want to see David dying. He doesn’t want any of this anymore. “No I just.. I know what you’re going through,” David explains, and the smile is totally gone now as he looks down at Mark and, God, he hasn’t cried yet. Not when Angel died, not for Mimi, not when Roger passed out on the floor and wouldn’t move. He hasn’t and he isn’t going to now, but this time it’s fucking hard and it burns at his throat, holding it all back. “I just wanted to be here for you, so you know you’re not alone in this.”

 

“Yeah…” Mark knows he isn’t alone. He knows that Collins, Maureen, Joanne.. They’re all hurting just as much as he is, they just have to deal with it in different ways. He knows this like he knows that Roger is all but dead, it’s all facts and Mark is a smart kid. He’s figured all this out. But none of that really matters right now. Because it feels like he’s the only one who still cares, and maybe if he sits here long enough… Maybe something will change, and so it doesn’t really matter that he knows it won’t.

 

“I know,” David says, his shaking hand patting Mark’s shoulder, barely a weight at all. Probably about the same if Roger tried. That same lack of weight, same lack of life. After so many hours of watching your friends die, it all starts to get to you, and not even a camera works to keep your distance. Mark is just starting to figure that out.

 

Goddamnit. Everyone thinks you’re dead, Roger, so stop pretending and we can go home.

 

* * *

 

 

**Scene Six**

 

How he found April…

 

No. no, no. Something are too raw, to real to be thought about. Roger twists in bed, pulling the white sheets up over his head. It’s warm in here, safe. Like heroin, all encompassing. Nothing can harm him.

 

She used his razor, taking out the blades, shoving them into her wrists.

 

She used his blades, his paper to write the note, his bathroom. She had an apartment of her own, but she came over to the loft, just to use his things. Just to get the message across, she carves his razors into her arms and let herself bleed out on his floor. His girl.

 

God, she screamed.

 

No, she must have screamed. Before he found her, sprawled out on the titles, blood following the little square pattern. Long gone before anyone found her, before anyone heard her.

 

When he found April, already dead. Too late to save her.

 

No.

 

Roger takes a deep breath and throws the blanket aside, letting it fall to the ground. Why is he all alone in this cold room? Why is it cold at all?

 

How he found her, lying half over the toilet, stomach acid on her lips. How no one ever tells you that if you’re in enough pain, your body tries to close itself down. You vomit. You piss. You shit.

 

How he found her like that.

 

“April.” Roger sits up on his bed, looking around. Where is his girl? Where is her smile? He doesn’t like being so alone.

 

On the other side of the loft, the bathroom door. The walls to the bedroom are down, he can see it perfectly. White, tale, unbreakable.

 

“April?”

 

How she once asked him, “What do you think of kids?” Like it’s the most natural question in the world, like what do you want for dinner? She asked him, and Roger didn’t say anything for a while. Just sat there with his guitar in his lap. What did he think of kids?

 

He must have been wearing a funny sort of expression. She laughs, a soft giggle that sounded better than any of the music Roger was writing. She leans against him, bony shoulder bumping against his. She’s gotten so skinny, they both have, and not just from the lack of food.

 

Skinny like skeletons, sick looking, hair falling out, gashes through their wrists. No.

 

No, not yet. Now April is beautiful.

 

Now she is alive, and she asks, “What would you name them, if you had a kid?”

 

“Kurt Zander for a boy and Billy Kim for a girl,” Roger answers after the shock is gone, and it really doesn’t seem like such a strange question. Lots of couples probably talk about kids, right? Only, it did seem odd to bring it up now and… “April, you’re not…”

 

She laughs again, and Roger relaxes. “No, of course not,” she giggles and Roger smiles at her, kissing his girl. “But one day…”

 

One day Roger would find her sprawled out in the bathroom smelling like death which smells like shit. They never tell you that. They never tell you that suicide smells like a decaying corpse, that it isn’t some beautiful.

 

They never tell you that the paramedics don’t even question why the body of your dead girlfriend is covered in vomit. They’re use to people throwing up on the scene.

 

No, no, no. He couldn’t think about that, had to get out.

 

No, not April, he couldn’t save her. She stuck his blades in her wrists and no, fight it. Don’t think.

 

Beep… Beep… It’s a lulling, mechanical nose. He’s laying back in bed, cold, can’t move, but nothing hurts.

 

“She told me about Roger… She’s worried about you.” Who is that? It isn’t Mark. Roger isn’t use to new voices, only Mark. Mark and his friends and sometimes doctors or nurses to say the same thing every damn time. No changes, nothing.

 

Who is in his room, talking to Mark? He knows he has to be there, Mark never leaves him. Safe from the images of April spread out, bleeding, cut open. No, not again.

 

Deeper, Roger tells himself, get deeper and don’t think. Not about Mark, not about strangers. Not about hospital rooms or razor blades. Just…

 

“April?”

 

He presses his hand to the white bathroom door. He can hear her choked sobs, but he wasn’t here. He couldn’t stop her. It’s unfair, he couldn’t stop her.

 

“April?” Roger grabs the handle, shaking the door. The cries are getting louder, feeling his head. He never heard anything like this. Never had a chance to save her. “April, I’m coming baby…”

 

Please, God, let him open the door. Jerking and fighting with it, clawing away at the paint and he can hear her dying, goddamnit. Screaming and bleeding, he can actually hear it, the sound of her heart slowing, fighting off the pain of open gashes in her wrist. Roger shouldn’t know what that sounds like.

 

He never had the chance to save her.

 

“April!” Listening to her die like Mark is watch him, no don’t think it. Just get to his girl, his April, open the door.

 

“Calm down, baby…” Roger pauses, looking over his shoulder at the hand on his shirt, nails painted a rainbow of colors and chipped down. April smiles at him. Calm, beautiful.

 

He can still hear her screaming for him in the bathroom. She changed her mind, she doesn’t want this, Roger please. Please help me, call the hospital, please, I don’t want to, you’re supposed to help…

 

And she smiles and wraps her arms around him. “It’s okay, baby.” Nipping at his ear, because she knows how much he likes that, giggling at the shiver that goes through him. She laughs and leans back on the bed, taking out her little kit. “It might pinch a bit.”

 

Roger rolls his eyes. Make up covered eyes, his dad would kill him if he saw. Not that Roger cares. He’s so different from that kid back in the suburbs now, make up and everything. He’s still nervous around her, though, because April can do that to a guy. She’s so full of life, charm, sex. You have to be nervous around her.

 

Picking at the trashy sheets, Roger tries to smile confidently. It isn’t like he’s never had heroin before. He’s smoked it plenty. A needle just seems scary to him, like when he was little and had to get the flu shot. Needles and shots hurt, not like April, who can hurt but only out of love and passion and the sex. “I’m not a baby, April.”

 

Only he is, in a whole lot of ways, just a baby. Too new to the streets still. Too hopeful. Too overly romantic, and April knows this and she laughs again, crawling closer as she ties off his arm. “Don’t worry,” she whispers, pressing the cold needle to his skin, and it would be sexy as hell if Roger couldn’t feel a sharp point inches from his vein. “I’ll take care of you.”

 

Roger, please, I changed my mind.

 

Licking his lips, he looks down at the needle before glancing back to April, her eyes and hair wild, her smile fierce. He’s over romantic, she knows that. He’s young and in love and would do anything for that smile. “Naught nurse is really only fun when you’re naked,” he jokes, trying to be more confident, more of the punk rock star he wants to be.

 

And April laughs again, and the needle goes through his skin.

 

“It’s alright, baby,” She whispers against his ear, tugging him back towards the bedroom, away from the screaming, the clawing. Please, Roger, please, oh God, I can’t get up, Roger.

 

“No!” Pushing her off his back, Roger lunges for the door, shoulder square against the wood. Not again, he can’t do it again. The withdrawal, the loss, the funereal and her parents and thinking about her every night. He doesn’t want heroin, he wants April. “April!” Screaming for her, don’t give up baby, he’s going to get through this door. It’s his head, he can get through this door if he just pushes and slams against it, don’t stop screaming and don’t give up.

 

The noise in his head, the noise in his room, it all feels like it’s bound to explode. He just wants to get to her. Save April this one time.

 

He’s not going to wake up, not until she’s safe.

 

“Fuck!” The door gives way, breaking off all together and Roger stumbles into the bathroom. Into the living room, the white light streaming in from the street.

 

He holds a hand up to his eyes, looking around the bright white room. Where is she? He knows she’s here, he can smell her, that shampoo she always uses. He loves that smell, it means she’s here.

 

Smiling, he shrugs off his jacket, walking to look behind the couch, in the kitchen, in the bathroom. She giggles, giving herself away.

 

“Found you…” Roger opens the bedroom, leaning against the doorframe and grinning at her. She looks like a kid in his shirt and boxers, eyes crinkled in a smile and hair in her face. It smells like her shampoo, like nights at the club, like a new addiction to hit his system.

 

“Of course you did.” Sitting up, she stretched out her legs, back arched, trying to look sexy. Only she looks like a little sister in his over sized clothes, curves all covered. He laughs and goes to fall at the foot at the bed, at her feet. “I wasn’t really trying to hide.”

 

“Come here…” Roger holds out his arms, and she fits right in, pressed up against his side, curled around him. They’re warm, so long as they stay pressed together like this. “Mimi?”

 

She twists her head up, hair still all in her face. Some gets in Roger’s mouth when she kisses him. Tastes like her, too. “Yeah?”

 

“I found her.”

 

“I know.” Laughing, she lays her head on his chest, and he takes in a deep breath. He doesn’t really remember what the shampoo is called or what it really smelled like. He just remembers loving her, and the smell, and everything. “You’re safe now.”


End file.
